On Sun, 2012-03-04 at 23:27 +0100, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> Sergio Cipolla <secipolla@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I'm not sure if you're a Debian Maintainer or not (or worse, Debian
> > Developer) but this kind of big mouthing shouldn't be accepted from a
> > DM/DD.
>
> I don't see a problem. Someone has a strong opinon, and perhaps the way
> it came across was a bit harsh, but I don't believe in papering over bad
> things by trying to dress them up in fancy words.
>
> As far as I see it, here's how things went: someone installed a package
> from a third party repository, that kinda screwed up his system in one
> way or the other. So he reported a bug against the Debian package
> (despite the recommendation of the 3rd party repository's maintainers,
> who clearly stated in the FAQ not to do this), and it got
> closed. Perhaps a few strongers words were used than neccessary, but
> honestly "crap" is not a word one should be afraid to see.
>
> Some packages - be them in Debian or in third-party repositories - are
> far worse than crap. We should not be afraid to call them out on that.
>
> But alas, the story goes further! The reporter does not reopen the
> original bug, but files another, with an insult. Further down the
> thread, we see this someone using a third party repository, without
> seemingly being able to tell it from a normal debian mirror.
>
> I find it strange that someone who edited his own sources.list, would
> not take the time to have a look at the site he copied the sources.list
> line from, and notice that is by far, not a Debian mirror at all.
[...]
Looking at the front page of http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ today, I
don't see a clear statement that it is unofficial.
If you already know the project well, you should know that our official
web sites are all under debian.org (though there is still an exception
to that: debconf.org). Also, if you look closely, you can infer it from
the references to 'official packages', and down at the bottom of the
page there is a note not to use the Debian BTS.
But for new users and potential users, this distinction probably isn't
obvious. There is a reason that Debian has pursued trademark
enforcement actions against various debian.xy domains. And to avoid
singling out debian-multimedia.org, I think this confusion could just as
well happen with repositories on foo.debian.net domains.
Perhaps we need some kind of policy for DDs establishing unofficial
repositories under 'debian' domains. Nothing too bureaucratic, just a
standard disclaimer that these are the responsiblity of the developer
that established the repository. Maybe also require redirecting bug
reports, if the repository isn't maintained by or which the blessing of
the official package maintainer.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
Every program is either trivial or else contains at least one bug

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